Taiwanese Cake (part 2)

A few days ago I decided to try the salty cake recipe again. I made this cake for Wid's dad who wasn't feeling well and didn't have too much apetite. Because of the Chinese medicine he was taking, he couldn't have pork so I decided to make the salty cake except this time I use chicken instead of pork. I managed to break the hand mixer when I tried to beat the egg and sugar. The mixer made a large pop sound along with a bright spark; the mixer shorted out the fuse in the house so everything went dark.

Besides almost electrocuting myself, everything went pretty smoothly. I modified my protocol (sounds like a science experiment. haha) a bit in an attempt to fix the texture problem from my previous attempt. I believed that the dense, doughy texture was due to the overly long cooking time and not enough steam. First change was to use a bigger steamer. Not only more steam would be generated and go through the slots, I could also use a larger baking pan (22 cm instead of 20 cm). Instead of moistening the paper that lined the bottom of the cake pan with butter, I just laid the paper on the very lightly buttered pan, like how we place a small piece of paper under buns for steaming. I tried to maximize the amount of steam produced as well as trying to cut down the total cooking time. I kept the fire on high for full boil during the entire time the cake was steamed. I also cut down the amount of cooking time down from 1+ hour to total of around 35 minutes (about 25 for the first layer and 15 for the second layer), and I checked on the doneness of the cake periodically with the toothpick. Because of these changes in the equiptment and cooking, the cake was perfect! Instead of being doughy and dense like the last cake, the cake had the perfect soft and fluffy texture.

I'll post the pics of the experiment later.